Dead trees turned into art in parks, along Chicago's lakefront

Artist Margot McMahon created the Jackson Park "Flock of Birds" art installation. Next she'll be working on two North Side trees near the Belmont exist of Lake Shore Drive.

Artist Margot McMahon created the Jackson Park "Flock of Birds" art installation. Next she'll be working on two North Side trees near the Belmont exist of Lake Shore Drive. (Nancy Stone / Chicago Tribune)

Two trees once slated for the ax are being transformed into works of art—oversized chess pieces—just off Lake Shore Drive, near the Belmont exit.

The two trees will become a single art piece created by the local artist Margot McMahon as part of an ongoing public art series known as the Chicago Tree Project. Up and down the lakefront and in several parks around the city, trees are being transformed into works.

The two chess pieces—a knight and a queen—will be carved out of the wood as though they were on a chessboard, said McMahon, 57, of Oak Park. She said the chess motif was inspired by the shapes of the tree shafts, one of which curved to resemble a horse's neck.

"It's called 'Checkmate,' and it's capturing the moment where the knight is in position to take down the king or the queen," she said. "It's this very tense moment in the chess game."

So far the knight is finished, and McMahon said she will begin working on the second chess piece in the spring. Both sit on the west side of Lake Shore Drive.

The knight took just more than a month of work for McMahon, who completed it on Nov. 10. McMahon said a typical carving piece of that size costs her several thousands of dollars to produce, with the labor and materials expenses. She said the Park District offered her a stipend to cover some of the expenses, including temporary scaffolding, which cost about $250.

The Park District has allocated $250,000 from its operating budget for art projects, according to Jessica Maxey-Faulkner, a spokeswoman. The artists receive stipends from the Park District to cover some of the costs of materials and labor, according to Maxey-Faulkner. McMahon's stipend was $1,000.

The Tree Project gives sculpture artists free reign to transform sick or dead trees that would otherwise be chopped down into living sculptures, according to Michael Dimitroff, the manager of art initiatives for the Park District.

That will last until the tree collapses, Dimitroff said. Many of the trees, including the ones McMahon is working on, are white ash trees that were attacked by the emerald ash borer, a beetle that has been knocking out the ash tree population in Illinois since the mid-2000s.

Other Tree Project sculptures in the works this fall include a piece in Harold Washington Park, 5200 S. Hyde Park Blvd., by Karen Gubitz and a piece in Jackson Park, 6401 S. Stony Island Ave., by Jim Long. Long is using chainsaws to carve the wood, according to Dimitroff.

Existing Tree Project sculptures include McMahon's first piece for the project, "Flock of Birds," in Jackson Park. That piece features a series of toy birds hanging from a tree's branches.

"This is a small way of re-purposing the trees and turning them into art, instead of taking a tree down and turning it into mulch, you have a living sculpture that will last until the tree's integrity doesn't," Dimitroff said. "It's a nice gesture of turning something that's unfortunately being decimated by nature."